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Booklist Editors Recommend

Beautiful You.

Palahniuk, Chuck (author).

Leave it to Palahniuk (Fight Club) to boldly go where few men have gone before: deep into the inner workings of women’s sensual bliss. Penny Harrigan, a young, struggling Nebraskan, attempting to make it as an attorney in Manhattan, literally stumbles into C. Linus Maxwell, aka Climax Well, the world’s richest man. When she begins dating Maxwell, Penny’s life changes in unimaginable ways. Maxwell, not content with his vast fortune, has spent years researching the mechanics of women’s sexual pleasure in the hopes of introducing a new line of sex toys and selling “mind–­blowing orgasms at a moderate price.” Subjected to extensive experimentation, Penny succumbs to ecstatic sensations that take her to the brink of a sexual coma. Through it all, Maxwell takes extensive notes as he records her vital signs and her reactions. Is Maxwell a generous lover or a mad scientist? When the Beautiful You line of products (“A billion husbands are about to be replaced”) is introduced to a receptive female public—irresistibly “combining ladies’ two greatest pleasures, sex and shopping”—society itself begins to break down. Part Ballardian dystopian novel mixed with a Nicholson Baker–like (House of Holes) joy of the lexicon of sex, Palahniuk’s newest is an unsubtle, often hilarious, over-the-top satire about rampant consumerism and man’s attempts to (literally) control women’s sexuality.

HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Facebook advertising, national media appearances, and Comic-Con promotions will be included in the advertising for this provocative new novel. Ben Segedin